A Pinch of Poison (2 page)

Lois Winston looked at the narrow shoulders, slight with youth, and maybe with more than youth. There was a thin neck above the dirty collar of the blue shirt. Max's thin face, as he half turned it, speaking, was thin and clear, with delicate bones leaving shadows on the planes of the cheeks. He was very young, she saw, and very worried.

“I know,” she said. She didn't know, perhaps. Things hadn't happened to her. But if you could get to know from what you saw, she could say that she knew. She saw enough of thin, worried young faces, male and female. “Heaven knows I do,” she thought, tiredly.

Max paid no attention to what she said. Her words were merely an encouraging murmur.

“In the hospital,” he said, “with a baby coming. That's where my wife is, miss.” He stopped, and she could see his neck redden slightly. “I'm sorry, miss,” Max said. “It's nothing to bother you with.” You're a fool, Max told himself. What are you whining to her for? What the hell does she care; what's it to her?

“Oh,” she said. “A baby. Another baby!”

“Listen, miss,” Max said. “Forget it, see? I'm just a guy who hasn't talked to anybody all day, and I got talking. But it's not
another
baby. It's our first baby.” She saw his shoulders stiffen defiantly. “Any reason why we shouldn't have a baby, miss?”

I could think of a thousand, she told herself. If you'd come down to our office some day, Mr. Fineberg, I could show you—

“No, Mr. Fineberg,” she said. “There isn't any reason why you shouldn't have a baby. I was—I was thinking of something else.”

“Sure, lady,” Max said. “You'll have to excuse me, lady. I'm sorry I got started that way.”

It was odd, Lois thought, as the pause after that lengthened until it was, to all appearances, permanent, how circumstances kept pushing the puzzle back into her mind. Now it was worrying her again—that odd thing she had discovered this afternoon, an hour or so before she encountered the discursive and self-centered, and oddly touching, Mr. Fineberg. If it meant anything, it meant something extremely unlikely; something darkly peculiar and out of the ordinary run. She was uncertain what to do, or whether to do anything. Already, perhaps, she had done too much; certainly, if there was anything to do she had done too much. There could be no doubt that, when the quite outlandish suspicion had crossed her mind, she had given herself away as completely as she well could. Perhaps that was because she was, for all her experience, an amateur; what they politely called a “volunteer.” Professional workers, perhaps, came against queer things so often that they learned to hide any evidence of surprise. Maybe, in other words, Dave was right, and she would leave the work to those trained for it, and living by it. A professional had, it might be—and as Dave insisted—an attitude which no amateur could ever attain. Perhaps there was something about knowing you could, at any time and without inconvenience, merely walk out which kept you from ever, in the real sense, quite going in.

But the fact was, Lois thought as they turned down the ramp at Seventy-ninth Street, worked south and cut east through Seventy-second—the fact was that she was doing good work. Or had been, until today. Now she might be making a mountain of a molehill, or of the shadow of a molehill. The chances were, say, a hundred to one that she was ascribing importance to the patently coincidental.

“After all,” she said to herself, “why? It wouldn't make sense. I must be imagining things, and that's all there is to it.”

And if she were, she had certainly been silly enough before the interview ended. That sudden change from accustomed friendliness, which reached even to the exchange of inconsequential confidences, to stiff professionalism. That suggestion of further steps to be taken, so flatly in contradiction to everything which had gone before. The implication, so clear in everything she had said in those last five minutes, that something had gone wrong and new problems been raised. And if nothing had, if it turned out to be all fantasy in the mind of a tired young woman on a hot afternoon—

“Well,” Lois thought, “I'll take some sort of a prize, certainly. But still, I'll have to tell Mary Crane.”

It was consoling to think of telling Mary Crane, who would understand and make so little of it, and who would advise so gently that you would feel, afterward, as if you had thought the whole thing out for yourself. Tomorrow, since it was too late tonight, she would tell Mary Crane. Tomorrow would, in any case, do as well as today.

The cab turned down Park and then east through Sixty-fourth to circle the block and come west again in Sixty-third, while Max looked for numbers. All very swank, Max commented to himself, when he found the number and drew in. The doorman in summer uniform opened the cab door and stood, politely attentive, as Lois Winston paid the bill. She took the change, as Max's expressive face revealed bitterness. But when she dropped it into the coin purse in her bag, her slender fingers brought something out again and the doorman looked surprised.

“Listen, miss—” Max started. “I don't know—”

“You can buy something for the baby,” Lois told him. “Or for the baby's mother. Goodbye, Mr. Fineberg.” She smiled at him. “It was much cooler on the parkway,” she said.

Max sat blinking at her, and then he blinked at the five-dollar bill in his hand. He regarded the doorman darkly, and the doorman regarded him with some suspicion. Then Max shrugged, and put the cab in gear. It was something to happen, all right. But she must be rolling in it, so probably it didn't mean a thing to her. He looked back at the apartment house, and at the back of the withdrawing doorman, solicitously conducting Miss—what was it he called her? Winstead?—through the dangers between curb and foyer. She was all right, but some people had all the luck. You couldn't get past that, Max told himself, as he turned up Park and trundled north again, with quick glances at the possible customers on the sidewalk. Some people had all the luck.

Next morning he remembered having thought that and remembered it with the awe of one who has been brushed, in passing, by the portentous. He remembered it while, sitting by a bed in the ward, he described the ride over and over to Rose, wringing it dry of drama. And Rose, who looked so pale and ill but was, the doctors said, going to be all right, looked up at him from the pillow and looked with admiration, as at one returned from adventure. Looking down at her Max fell silent after a moment, and then he took one of her hands. It was warm and sentient in his. He turned it over and let his thumb move gently along her wrist. He could feel her pulse there, going steadily. Thump, thump. It made him feel as if he had something very important to say.

“Rose,” he said. “I tell you, Rose. It makes you think.” He said it with a kind of wonder, as if it were really something very important to say.

2

T
UESDAY

5:30
P.M.
TO
9:45
P.M.

It was a surprise to find Buddy at home. It was a surprise to find him even in town. He called from the living-room as she stepped into the foyer of the apartment on the roof.

“Lois?” he called, and when, as she nodded to Mary, who stood smiling attentively at the foot of the stairs to the second floor, she admitted her identity: “Come here a minute, will you, Sis?”

“I'll want Anna in a few minutes, Mary,” Lois said. “After I speak to Mr. Ashley. Coming, Buddy.”

Buddy could stand up at the entrance of a lady with all the nonchalance of one who was still sitting down. He did so now.

“We thought you might like a drink,” he said. “After your services in the cause.”

Buddy was, she had to agree as she looked at him, handsome enough, for a man who drank as much as he did at twenty-three. He was wiry and thin, although you would never confuse his sort of thinness with that of, say, her little taxi-driver. He also looked discontented, and his voice was heavily ironic on “services in the cause.”

“Hello, Buddy,” Lois said. “Madge.” She paused, with a tentative smile for the third person in the room, a relaxed and olive-skinned young woman in the very enticingly cut print, who reclined in a deep chair.

“Carol Halliday.” Buddy was casual. “This is my sister Lois, Carol. My half-sister, to be exact. Lois Winston.”

“Oh, yes,” Carol said. Her voice was attractively husky. “How do you do, Miss Winston?”

“You all look very comfortable,” Lois said. “And cool.”

“Buddy has simply saved our lives, Lois. Literally.” That was Madge.

Lois said she was so glad. Buddy said, “What'll it be, Sis?” He said it a little as if he expected a refusal. But she took a cocktail and, still standing near the door, sipped it slowly.

He brought me in to prove he can have Madge here when he likes, Lois thought. And her friends. He is sometimes unbelievably callow, Lois thought.

“What I really want,” she said, “is a shower and something dry.” She finished the cocktail; put down the glass. He can have a dozen Madges for all me, she thought. My foolish little brother. I'm not responsible for what he does. But she wished she could really convince herself of that. She shook her head as Buddy raised the shaker again.

“Not now,” she said, as she smiled at them again and turned through the door. “Perhaps later.” Perhaps, she thought, I really will; the coolness of the apartment, brought by motors which somewhere turned with untiring ease, lessened her weariness. It was good to be cool again, and at home. It was good to have space and quiet and service.

It's fine to have money, all right, she thought, thinking of little Max Fineberg. Money and no real worries—except a little about Buddy. And of course, she added to herself, a little about Dave. And a little about the afternoon's puzzle.

But after all, she thought, I'm only a volunteer. I can quit any time and just play. And I'm young and people don't mind looking at me and …

And, she thought a few minutes later, as she stood under the shower and looked approvingly down at herself, I'm not going to have a baby. Hurray, hurray! Not like poor little Mrs. Fineberg.

Anna was quietly efficient when Lois came out of the shower. The spread on the bed was turned back, the shades closed, everything as she had imagined it that long, hot distance ago when she was walking down the street toward Max Fineberg's cab, and trying to convince herself that she should stick to the rules and walk to the subway. There was, she told Anna, nothing more for—she picked up her watch from the bedside table—at least an hour. Anna said, “Yes, miss,” and started out. Lois made a sudden decision.

“Oh, Anna,” she said, “you might bring me a copy of the Encyclopædia. The H's.”

“The Encyclopædia, miss?” Anna repeated. “The volume with the H's in it?”

“Yes, Anna, please,” Lois said. “There's something I want to look up.”

Anna brought the volume and Lois Winston, resting it uncomfortably on her abdomen, read. Then she said, “Um-m-m!” and lay for a while looking at the ceiling. “That's what I thought,” she said, after a bit. “I'll have to talk to Mary Crane.” Then, quite unexpectedly to herself, she went to sleep.

It was almost seven when Anna rapped restrainedly on the door. Lois awoke and said, “Come,” and tried to remember the wild turmoil of dreams which was slipping away. It was something about—But she could not remember what it was about. Anna said it was almost seven and Lois lay quietly for a moment looking at her. Then Lois was wide awake and off the bed and telling Anna she thought the blue print and then she was looking at herself in the dressing-table mirror. She looked rested, she thought, and a little flushed.

“I hope you had a nice rest, miss,” Anna assured her. Anna was calm and unhurried and began to arrange Lois's hair. Lois rubbed cream into her skin and rubbed it out again. She said it was a lovely rest. Somebody knocked at the door.

“Yes?” Lois said.

“I want to talk to you a minute, Sis.” That was Buddy, with a demand in his voice.

“I'm dressing,” Lois said. “And I've just time before Dave comes for me. You can talk to me tomorrow.”

“It won't take me long to say what I want to say,” Buddy insisted. “And I want to say it tonight.” He spoke as if only what he wanted was important. Lois stirred impatiently under Anna's fingers and made a face at Anna in the mirror. Anna looked dispassionately sympathetic.

“No,” Lois said. “Tomorrow will have to do, Buddy. And if it's about—”

“You know what it's about,” Buddy broke in. He had half opened the door. “I just want to say—get Anna out of here, will you?”

Lois was on her feet, turning to face him.

“I told you no,” she said. “I told you I was dressing. Get out of here, Randall. And stay out until I invite you in.” She looked at him and he stared back. “All right,” she said. “Get out.”

She was stronger; she was always stronger when it was worth the trouble. She was always stronger when she called him Randall instead of “Buddy”; it made him feel, somehow, like a boy who has been reprimanded. It also made him sulky, and there was sullen anger in his gaze now as he stared at her a moment longer. Then he shrugged and closed the door behind him. Lois stood for a moment staring at the door and then she sat down at the mirror again. Anna's proper face showed sympathy and agreement.

“It will be about Madge again, of course,” Lois said, only half to Anna. “If he'd only—only let it lie. Anyway until Mother comes back.”

“Mrs. Ashley is coming back tomorrow, miss.” Anna said. “For the day. For some shopping. She called Mary this afternoon, I think. I supposed Mary had told you.”

“Oh,” said Lois. “No—I only saw Mary a moment. I suppose she told my brother?”

“I think she told Mr. Ashley, miss.” There was no comment in the tone. It hardly skirted a subject which was outside Anna's accepted sphere of comment.